The Skimmer

A Slobbering Love Affair

By Bernard Goldberg Regnery; 184 pages

As a conservative media critic writing for a conservative publishing house addressing a conservative audience, Bernard Goldberg, a former CBS journalist and the author of the media-bashing memoir Bias, doesn’t have to do much to notch a best seller. Step 1: sarcastically criticize the “mainstream media” as hopelessly liberal. Step 2: repeat for 20 or so abbreviated chapters. Goldberg’s objections to “mainstream media” coverage of Barack Obama are fairly well worn. Among the many complaints, he notes that Obama’s associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers didn’t get enough press scrutiny during last year’s election campaign, while Sarah Palin’s clothing and Joe the Plumber’s personal life got too much. Because of their fawning over Obama, the “mainstream media”–if the author removed that modifier, this book would be a pamphlet–have left their credibility “in tatters,” Goldberg writes. Of course, just saying something doesn’t make it so. But that won’t matter to Goldberg’s readers, who will devour his latest with gusto.

READ SKIM TOSS [X]